A vehicle health management system may be used to monitor the operating health of a vehicle, such as an aircraft, a spacecraft, a ground vehicle, a watercraft, or other machinery. An example vehicle health management system includes a data processing system and one or more sensors. The sensors may be integrated with a vehicle or otherwise configured to generate data relating to operating conditions of the vehicle, and the data processing system may be configured to receive data from the sensors and process the data to determine a current state or health of the overall vehicle or of one or more particular vehicle components, to predict a future state the vehicle, and perhaps to perform or trigger other actions based on the processing of the data.
Vehicles commonly incorporate data processing systems for receiving and processing sensor data in real time and/or for storing the sensor data for offline processing, such as during a vehicle maintenance operation. In one example, an automobile may include various sensors for collecting data relating to operating conditions of an engine, safety systems, fluid levels, climate control systems, and the like. In this example, the automobile also includes a data processing system for processing the sensor data and notifying a user of the operating conditions of the vehicle, such as by activating a check-engine light or by providing other alerts.
In another example, a vehicle management system monitors the health of a fleet of many vehicles, such as a fleet of aircraft. In this example, each aircraft may include numerous sensors, such as acoustic sensors, environmental sensors, accelerometers, stress/strain sensors, pressure sensors, and the like, and each sensor may be configured to continuously, intermittently, or periodically collect data relating to the aircraft. Like in the above example, each aircraft may include a data processing system for receiving and processing data from the sensors in real-time to assist a pilot to operate the aircraft, for instance.
In this example, the data processing system of each aircraft is also configured to communicate the sensor data continuously to a “central” data processing system. Generally, the central data processing system receives very large amounts of data from the fleet of vehicles, which presents challenges in effectively processing the data to provide useful health status information. Consequently, the central data processing system may be configured to electronically store the received sensor data for offline processing when there is a need, such as a need to investigate an abnormal operating condition, an equipment failure, or other accident, or to help manage the health of the fleet of aircraft as a whole. However, even the offline processing of such large amounts of data typically requires significant processing time and resources to just identify data that is relevant or useful for further analytics.
It is generally desirable to improve on the existing systems or at least to provide one or more useful alternatives to help to make vehicle health management systems more efficient and faster in the processing of data and to improve real-time intelligence regarding the health status of one or more vehicles.